Painting BC-3

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Biography

About the work

Historical background

Hsia Yang has a birth name of Hsia Tsu-hsiang. He was born in Xiangxiang City, Hunan Province, China in 1932. Having lost both parents as a small child, Hsia was brought up by his grandmother and other supportive family members. With financial assistance from his aunt, Hsia enrolled in the privatelyowned Zhongying High School after graduating from elementary school, but soon transferred to the Nanjing Municipal Teachers School. Hsia came to Taiwan as a nationalist army member in 1949. In August of the same year, he switched to the air force and began working with painter Wu Hao at its headquarter. The two aspiring artists registered at the “Fine Arts studio” at Hankou Street, Taipei in 1957 to learn with Huang Jung-tsan, Chu Te-chun and Li Chung-sheng, but dropped out when they couldn’t afford tuition fees anymore. Later, Hsia registered again at Li Chung-sheng’s Antung Street Studio, where he befriended Hsiao Chin, Huo Kang and Li Yuan-chia. Hsia was influenced by the Age of Machinery in his early career. In an attempt to deconstruct reconstruct traditional figures, he has created a number of remarkable works including Flying Asparas. In 1957, Hsia became a founding member of the Oriental Painting Group. Influenced by abstract impressionism, he started to create automatic paintings during this time. Two years later, he retired from the army and joined the Mandarin Daily News as an art editor. In 1963, he decided to pursue an artist’s career abroad, first arriving in Italy and then going to France. It was during his stay in France that he developed a famous series entitled Fuzzy People. The artist moved to New York, the United States in 1967, where he made a living on repairing antiques. Because photorealism was quite popular in the United States, in 1977, Hsia picked up the concept and created the Black and White, Border Colors, Single Person and City Bird series. Hsia moved back to Taiwan in 1992 and continued creating works of art until today. Presently, he resides in mainland China.

Ever since the Fuzzy People series, Xia has continued creating super-realistic artworks. He sticks to the style for such a long time that most people forget he used to make abstract artworks in the early years, such as Painting BC-3. This painting is entirely composed of color paint and black lines without concrete forms. The powerful brushstrokes seem to gather up spiritual force, while the painted space exudes ethereal melancholy.

Like most other members of the Oriental Painting Group, Xia Yang also came to Taiwan after a war was raged between the communist and nationalist parties. Despite a tough life ahead, Xia remained passionate about painting. Xia Yang befriended painter Wu Hao in the army. Together they learned with Li Chung-sheng, for which Xia Yang became one of the “Eight Tough Painters” of the Oriental Painting Group. It is because he is so in love with painting art that he left Taiwan to learn more about the study and creation of the art. Having lived in the east and the west, Xia has been impacted and enlightened by both sides. He turns his feelings and thoughts into alternative artworks, such as the Fuzzy People. In this series, Xia uses changing lines commonly found in Chinese painting to portray the drifting figures. At a later stage, he would take busy urban people as the subject matter, putting their dynamic movements down to canvas to suggest alienation in modern society.